Hi! My name is Donna Jodhan; Author of audio mysteries, writer, blogger, and a life style specialist. I produce monthly newsletters for a wide audience and I'd like to welcome you to my newsletter for this month.

In my newsletter you will find the following:

Practical tips to enhance your daily life,

Mystery of the month,

From the desk of author Donna Jodhan,

A news flash from author Donna Jodhan,

Author Donna Jodhan's picks of the month.

To learn more about author Donna Jodhan and how you can access her audio mysteries visit http://www.donnajodhan.com and become a supporter of her anti-bullying campaign.

Check out her weekly podcast Take Another 5; a bit of this and a bit of that ranging from recipes to technology, mystery moment to in the end zone with the entrepreneur, and scam alerts to building awareness on bullying. Available for download from http://www.takeanother5.com and from iTunes.

Section: Practical tips to enhance your daily life:

Welcome to our varied collection of links for your reading pleasure. They are meant to help you keep up with improvements and enhancements to various products and services that are a part of your daily life.

1. BeSpecular - help the blind (iOS, Free)

BeSpecular is the best way to do a good deed so that even when you have a busy schedule, you can help someone who's blind. As a blind/visually impaired person, you can ask text/voice questions and receive quick replies that are friendly and helpful.

Do you want to help/volunteer in your community, but you don't have the time?

Helping your community should be simple, convenient, and fun.Now you can help someone who's blind by using your smartphone. You can spend a few seconds listening to the question, look at the picture(s), and reply with a friendly voice note or text message.

You can:

Use your eyes and intuition which no computer can replace,

Help blind or visually impaired people from around the world,

Learn what it's like to live blind,

Do a good deed and feel amazing,

Make a real contribution to someone else's life.

Are you blind or visually impaired & need that extra little bit of help

You should be able to conveniently ask your questions and know that someone who's sighted will happily and quickly be able to help.

Now you're able to personalize your questions to find out exactly what you're looking for. You can upload or take photos and ask with a voice/text message. You'll receive as many friendly and helpful replies as you need.
You can:

Ask your question and receive your reply shortly,

Use the app in various situations, e.g. getting more detailed descriptions of items you'd like to buy online, read the ad insert you found in the mail, understand what's going on with your computer when your Screen Reader won't work, re-live memories with beautiful descriptions of your photographs, etc,

Remain on a first-name basis and not have to reveal any personal info,

2. Blindfold Basketball (iOS, Free with In-App Purchases)

Blindfold Basketball is a fully accessible audio game that's just like playing basketball on an indoor court.

In Blindfold Basketball, the tutorial teaches you how to move on the court, pick up the ball, dribble and shoot with 3 lessons. Then you start playing one of the coach game. Coach tells you where to go, and which of 5 different types of shots to make: such as a free throw, dunk, hook, jump or post shot.

As you move from level to level in the coach games, your shooting must become more accurate to score points.

Once you get good at the coach games, you can play with opponents are the court. Depending on the game, some opponents move around randomly and others play a strong defensive game, trying to block your shots.

3. Blindfold RS Games (iOS, Free with In-App Purchases)

RS Games specializes in the development of accessible games, products and software for the blind and visually impaired. RS Games are played by thousands of visually impaired people on Windows and Mac computers, and Blindfold Games and RS Games teamed up to create this app.

Now you can play any of the 20 different multi-player games on an iPhone, iPad or iPod. Just login with your RS Games account, or create a new account, and start playing.

Several of the games are free, and others are available with an in-app
upgrade.

You can start a public game or a private game, or you can join one of the public games that haven't started yet. You can add computer bot players to your game to make it more exciting.

4. Blindfold Sound Search (iOS, Free with In-App Purchases)

Blindfold Sound Search is a fully accessible matching game that is inspired by matching games and interesting sounds for both sighted and visually impaired people, designed for rapid audio play.

There are several types of games in Sound Search.

Name That Sound improves your skill at matching an object with its sound.

Find That Sound is a matching game where you must remember the square where each sound is located.

In both games, you start out matching 3sounds to complete the level. Each time you complete a level, the next level has the prior level's bird songs, along with two more sounds randomly mixed up. In both games, you win points for good matches, lose points for bad matches, and can be played for dozens of levels.

There are several sound packs available as upgrades: Common Animals, Asian Animals, National Anthems, Musical Instruments and Everyday Sounds.

5. Escape from the Amazon (iOS, US$0.99)

'Escape from the Amazon' is an interactive story that combines the best
of the much loved 'choose your own story' games with the exciting
possibilities of your iPhone or iPad.

A group of travellers, one of them your partner, is in a plane crash in a remote area of the Amazon rainforest. They are depending on you for their survival; as their only lifeline, you make life and death decisions. The fate of your partner is in YOUR hands.

The thrilling 'Escape from the Amazon' is a story by horror writer
Stephen Quid. It takes place in real time over the course of several days.

As your friends struggle for survival in a breathtaking jungle landscape, you will receive notifications of new messages and questions, and can respond to them directly in the game or from your notifications screen on your iPhone or iPad.

'Escape from the Amazon' is an immersive adventure that challenges your
knowledge, your confidence and your willingness to take risks. With your love's life on the line, what will YOU do?

8. Scrivener (iOS, US$19.99)

Typewriter. Ring-binder. Scrapbook. Scrivener combines all the writing tools
you need to craft your first draft, from nascent notion to final full stop.

Tailor-made for creating long manuscripts, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don't know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea.

Whether you plan or plunge, Scrivener works your way: meticulously outline every last detail first, or hammer out a complete draft and restructure later. Or do a bit of both. All text sections in Scrivener are fully integrated with its outlining tools, so working with an overview of your manuscript is only ever a tap away, and turning Chapter Four into Chapter One is as simple as drag and drop.

Need to refer to research? In Scrivener, your background material is always at hand. Write a description based on a photograph. Reference a video or PDF. Check for consistency with an earlier chapter. On the iPad, open two documents side-by-side; on the iPhone, flip between research and writing with just two taps.

Once you're ready to share your work with the world, simply compile
everything into a single document for printing, or export to popular formats such as Word, PDF, Final Draft or plain text. You can even share using different formatting, so that you can write in your favorite font and still keep your editor happy.

Terminology is a browser for the English language – part
dictionary/thesaurus and part research tool. Terminology is designed to make it easy to explore words and phrases, diving down to more and less specific terms - accessing the web and other apps for more detail and sharing.

More than a dictionary, Terminology can be extended with custom actions to search the Internet as well as other reference apps which support
integration – making it a great place to start all your searches.

One of the most popular reference apps on the App Store, Terminology is a Universal (iPad/iPhone) app, ready for iOS 9, with iCloud sync of favorites terms, lookup history and custom actions.

11. Timecrest: The Door (iOS, Free with In-App Purchases)

There exists another world, and that world desperately needs your help.

Alyncia is about to be destroyed by meteors. When it seems all hope is lost for this magical world, a young mage named Ash establishes a connection with you and discovers that you have the power to alter time in Alyncia.
In this time of darkness, Ash needs a friend. Ash needs you.

EXPERIENCE AN EPIC STORY with over 170,000 words and multiple endings.

DECIDE who lives and who dies. Your decisions change the story, so choose wisely.

EXPLORE ALYNCIA at your own pace with our new non-linear maps.

IMMERSE YOURSELF in a world of fantasy and magic, with 14 musical tracks to set the scene.

BUILD A TEAM and make friends. Unlock secret storylines by building your relationship with other characters.

Timecrest is a nonlinear story based game with multiple endings where every choice you make matters. The story progresses in realtime. Ash will be notifying you on what is happening in Alyncia and awaits your guidance throughout the day.

Uber has launched an accessibility web site in the
US. The site gives policy information and provides a
contact link to a dedicated accessibility team.
https://accessibility.uber.com

Like many of us, David Goldfield frequently fields a number of predictable questions, so he has written a FAQ document on the topic "How
Does a Blind Person Use a Computer or Smartphone, Anyway?"https://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com/faq/

Section: Mystery of the month:

This month, I'd like to whet your appetite with a brief description of one of my episodes of my audio mysteries that I have chosen for you. This one is called "The Lawyers Lounge" and here is a brief description.

Why would anyone have wanted Ryan Christoffson dead? Sure, he had just won the case of his life and sure! He had been embroiled in a bitter dispute with his half brother but who really killed him and why? Was he killed because he had been too successful? Or was something else the reason for Ryan's unfortunate demise?

Who could have done it?

Was it Andrew Gareth?
He had wanted revenge over Ryan because of his recent victory.

Was it Shaun Christoffson?
He had wanted Ryan dead because of an inheritance matter.

Was it Ian Lackatos?
He had wanted Ryan dead because of what he knew.

Poor Ryan is a victim of family dislike and fellow lawyer jealousy.
He meets his demise partly through his brilliance. Old family hatred and secrets all combine to make this mystery not just exciting but rivetting and at the end!

You won't believe how the murder was carried out and the twists and turns that culminate in a gripping end.

You can purchase this audio mystery for the very affordable price of $2.49 U.S. Each of my audio mysteries costs $2.49 U.S and you can purchase an entire season of 13 mysteries for the very low price of $24.99 U.S.

Donna also produces various other useful posts every Saturday:
Helpful monthly tips.
Where to find your best American cities.
How to make your products and services more accessible
And editorials on creating an accessible workplace.
Technology related articles each Wednesday and Thursday.http://www.sterlingcreations.com/businessdesk.htm

Section: A news flash from Author Donna Jodhan:

Author Donna started a new feature on her Facebook page in early August and now you can keep up to date with her super Sunday author and winning Wednesday author and it is all about author Donna sharing some of the hottest best sellers by some of the very top authors of the day. Visit www.facebook.com/authordonnajodhan to learn more.
There, you will also learn more about her new weekly podcast take another 5 and you can download from www.takeanother5.com and from iTunes.

Section: Author Donna Jodhan's Picks of the Month:

Something about a baby's bones:
Babies have more bones in their bodies
than adults. As the babies grow older,
some bones eventually fuse together
(like in the skull), resulting in fewer
bones as an adult.

What's this about a blue moon?
It appears every three years but guess what?
It is silver grey in color.

About a toaster:
A toaster uses almost half as much energy as a
full-sized oven.

A tip on how to cool your tongue after eating spicy foods!
Drinking water after eating hot spicy food will not calm your
tongue. The spices in most of the hot foods that we eat are
oily, and oil and water don't mix. In this case, the water just
rolls over the oily spices. What
can you do to calm your aching tongue? Eat bread. The
bread will absorb the oily spices. A second solution is to
drink milk. Milk contains a substance
called "casein" which will bind to the spices and carry them away.

Something useful to know about the color of blood:
Blood is bright red in its oxygenated form and a dark red in deoxygenated form. In simpler terms, it is bright red when
it leaves the lungs full of oxygen and dark red when it returns to the lungs for a refill. Veins appear
blue because light penetrating the skin is absorbed and reflected in high energy wavelengths back to the eye. Higher
energy wavelengths are blue.

About your pressure cooker?
Food cooked in a pressure cooker is more flavorful, cooks faster, and contains more nutrients.
A pressure cooker saves more energy and is easier to clean.

You can follow Author Donna Jodhan on Twitter @author_jodhan or @accessibleworld
Or chat with her on Skype @habsfan0526.
Be sure to like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authordonnajodhan

With very best wishes for a super month of September,
Donna J. Jodhan AKA Detective DJ